Headline

On $15 A Month, Venezuela’s Teachers Live Hand To Mouth

Published

6 months ago

February 22, 2025

With a monthly salary of $15, a teacher in Venezuela earns nowhere near enough to cover their basic food necessities, never mind rent or medicine.

Many in the crisis-stricken South American country are forced to work multiple jobs, or pool their money with family.

Thousands have emigrated in pursuit of greater financial stability.

“For the past two years, the situation has been horrible; you can’t even buy shoes,” 70-year-old Maria Cerezo, who has been a teacher in the public sector for 39 years, told AFP at a thrift shop in the capital Caracas.

She had just selected a blue nylon dress with white polka dots — and a price tag of $2. She hid the garment behind other clothes for sale.

“I’ll get it tomorrow, God willing, because I don’t have the money today,” Cerezo explained.

She remembers a time when a teacher would buy “clothes, shoes, electrical appliances” with their yearly bonus.

Nowadays, “it’s not possible.”

A basket of food essentials for a family of four in Venezuela costs about $500 a month, 33 times the salary of a teacher — a profession that has historically been underpaid, but never as little as now.

Cerezo’s family budget is augmented by the salaries of her daughter — also a teacher — and her husband, a lawyer.

– Role models –

An 80-percent drop in GDP over a decade of increasingly repressive rule by President Nicolas Maduro since 2013 has pushed more than eight million Venezuelans — a quarter of the population — to seek a better life elsewhere.

A public sector teacher’s salary is not even among the lowest.

The minimum salary in Venezuela today is $2 a month, which the government supplements with subsidies.

In the private sector, the average monthly income is about $200.

Most public schools today operate only two or three days a week so that teachers can work additional jobs.

Some give private lessons, others drive taxis or sell crafts.

Venezuela’s education system has a deficit of 200,000 teachers, according to the government, and enrolment of student teachers is down nearly 90 percent.

For those who remain in the profession, there is the El Ropero Solidario thrift store in Caracas, run by teacher Kethy Mendoza and supported by the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers.

Much of the merchandise comes from educators, who receive half of the sale price of an item of clothing — which they can also opt to donate — while the other half keeps the shop running.

“We are role models for the children,” Mendoza, 64, explained of the endeavor, which also aims to help teachers in need of medicines, food and emergency hospital care.

“If we go to school poorly dressed because the economic crisis doesn’t allow us to buy a change of clothes or decent shoes, how can we expect of the pupils to come dressed properly, presentable?”

Maduro, who claimed victory in July 2024 elections that the opposition and much of the international community says he stole, insists low salaries are a consequence of international sanctions.

Experts point to economic mismanagement and corruption in the oil-rich former petro state as other factors.
AFP

Headline

Wildfire Engulfs Mountain Near Western Canada City

Published

3 hours ago

August 13, 2025

Editor

Nearly 20,000 residents of a community in western Canada were on standby on Wednesday as a wildfire engulfed a mountain overlooking the city of Port Alberni, the latest area threatened in the country’s second-worst fire season on record.

“I’ve lived in Port Alberni since 1956, and this is one of the biggest fires we’ve ever seen,” Russ Wetas, 69, told AFP as smoke from Mount Underwood filled the sky behind him.

The wildfire service in the west coast province of British Columbia has listed the Mount Underwood fire as “out of control,” meaning it is expected to spread further.

But it remained unclear if Port Alberni, roughly 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) north, will be evacuated.

On the opposite end of the vast country, in the easternmost province of Newfoundland and Labrador, parts of the capital, St. John’s, received evacuation orders on Tuesday, following several days of intensifying fire.

A wildfire was also burning on Wednesday on the outskirts of Halifax, a major city in the eastern province of Nova Scotia, with a population of nearly half a million.

This is already Canada’s second-worst wildfire season in terms of landmass burned, based on figures dating back to 1983.

So far, 7.4 million hectares (18.3 million acres) have been scorched, an area nearly as large as Panama, putting 2025 past the 7.1 million hectare mark from 1995.

But this year is not expected to pass 2023, when 17.3 million hectares burned, an extraordinary toll that focused global attention on the growing threat of wildfires boosted by human-induced climate change.

Smoke from this year’s wildfires has put tens of millions of people under air quality alerts in both Canada and the United States. The haze has even crossed the Atlantic, affecting people in western Europe.

More than 700 wildfires were burning across Canada on Wednesday, including 161 considered out of control, with nearly every province and territory impacted.

Mount Underwood is on Vancouver Island, making the blaze there part of a worrying trend of increased wildfire activity near the coast.

Experts have said that historically, coastal areas did not burn, but more serious wildfires near the ocean are being recorded, even if they remain less intense than blazes further inland.

“This is a fire that hasn’t been seen on Vancouver Island,” John Jack, a First Nations chief and regional official, told the public broadcaster CBC.

Ted Hagard, who works at Port Alberni’s paper mill, told AFP he had been watching the fire’s progression on social media but needed to see it for himself.

It’s “insane how huge it is,” the 46-year-old said, standing on the shores of a lake adjacent to Mount Underwood.

Canada is experiencing a rise in conditions that are conducive to fires, experts say, linking the trend to climate change, which has caused elevated temperatures, reduced snow, shorter and milder winters, and earlier summer weather.

Headline

Zelensky Rules Out Swapping Territory, Calls For ‘Fair Peace’

Published

9 hours ago

August 13, 2025

Editor

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that Ukraine and its allies must work together to pressure Russia into ending its invasion, ahead of talks in Berlin with European leaders and US President Donald Trump.

“Pressure must be exerted on Russia for the sake of a fair peace. We must learn from the experience of Ukraine and our partners to prevent deception on the part of Russia,” Zelensky wrote on social media.

“There are currently no signs that the Russians are preparing to end the war,” he added.

Zelensky is due in Berlin on Wednesday for talks with European leaders and Trump ahead of the US president’s summit with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The Ukrainian leader said he and his team had held more than 30 conversations with world leaders and high-ranking officials ahead of the talks.

The flurry of diplomatic engagements have been overshadowed by rapid, but so far limited Russian push in the eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.

A member of the Ukrainian delegation travelling with Zelensky to Berlin told AFP that the Russian gains around the mining hub of Dobropillia “did not influence” preparation for Wednesday’s talks.

Zelensky conceded one day earlier that Russian forces had advanced by up to 10 kilometres (six miles), but ruled out swapping territory with Moscow as part of any deal with Russia.

AFP

Headline

S’Africa Offers US New Trade Deal To Avoid 30% Tariff

Published

1 day ago

August 12, 2025

Editor

South Africa will offer a “generous” new trade deal to the United States to avoid 30 percent tariffs, ministers said Tuesday.

Washington on Friday slapped the huge tariff on some South African exports, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, despite efforts by Pretoria to negotiate a better arrangement to avoid massive job losses.

The ministers did not release details of the new offer but said previously discussed measures to increase imports of US poultry, blueberries, and pork had been finalised.

“When the document is eventually made public, I think you would see it as a very broad, generous and ambitious offer to the United States on trade,” Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said at a press briefing.

Officials have said the 30 per cent tariff could cost the economy around 30,000 jobs.

“Our goal is to demonstrate that South African exports do not pose a threat to US industries and that our trade relationship is, in fact, complementary,” Trade Minister Parks Tau said.

The United States is South Africa’s third-largest trading partner after the European Union and China.

However, South African exports account for only 0.25 per cent of total US imports and are “therefore not a threat to US production”, Tau said.

Steenhuisen said US diplomats raised issues related to South African domestic policies, which was a “surprise given the fact we thought we were in a trade negotiation”.

The two nations are at odds over a range of policies.

US President Donald Trump has criticised land and employment laws meant to redress racial inequalities that linger 30 years after the end of apartheid.

“Things like expropriation without compensation, things like some of the race laws in the country, are issues that they regard as barriers now to doing trade with South Africa,” he told AFP on the sidelines of the briefing.

“I think we’re seeing some form of a new era now where trade and tariffs are being used to deal with other issues, outside of what would generally be trade concerns,” Steenhuisen said.